Psycho (1960) - Synopsis The content of this page was created directly by users and has not been screened or verified by IMDb staff. Warning! This synopsis may contain spoilers See plot summary for non-spoiler summarized description. Visit our Synopsis Help to learn more Synopsis In a Phoenix hotel room on a Friday afternoon, Marion Crane ( Janet Leigh ) and her out-of-town lover Sam Loomis ( John Gavin ) end a stolen lunchtime interlude with yet another disagreement about their future. Marion wants to marry Sam, but debts inherited from his father and his own alimony payments do not leave him enough money to support her as he would like. As they have done so often before on Sam's business trips to Phoenix, they part leaving their future uncertain. Marion returns to the real estate office where she works as a secretary, arriving just ahead of her boss Mr. Lowery ( Vaughn Taylor ) and his client Cassidy ( Frank Albertson ) who buys a house from Lowery with $40,000 in cash. Lowery tells Marion to put the money in the safe deposit box at the bank until Monday. Pleading a headache, Marion asks to take the rest of the day off after her errand to the bank.

But Marion doesn't go to the bank. On the spur of the moment, she decides to keep the money, packs a suitcase, and starts driving out of town, only to be spotted by her boss at an intersection where he gives her a suspicious look. Worried that she has been found out already, she still proceeds out of town on her way to Fairvale, California, where Sam lives. All the while she keeps looking behind her, fearful that she's being followed. She drives well into the night and parks alongside the road to sleep. In the morning, a highway patrolman ( Mort Mills ) stops to investigate her stopped car, and awakens her. Startled and nervous, she arouses the patrolman's suspicions. He looks at her license and registration, taking note of the plate number. He allows her to go on, but follows her for a while, which intensifies Marion's agitation. Realizing that her car can easily give her away, Marion decides to trade it in for a different car. She stops in at a used car lot, hurriedly pays the salesman ( John Anderson ) $700 cash for a likely substitute, and completes the deal as the same highway patrolman watches from across the street.

Nervous, she drives away and continues toward Fairvale. As night falls on this second day, with her fears of pursuit crowding in around her, she drives into a rainstorm. Unable to see the road clearly, she spots the lighted sign of the Bates Motel, and decides to take a room for the night. As there are no other cars there, and no one in the motel office, she honks her horn upon seeing a light on in the house behind the motel, and a silhouette in the window. Someone dashes down the path to greet her, and he introduces himself as Norman Bates ( Anthony Perkins ). He is soft-spoken and shy young man who tells Marion that he lives in the large house with his mother. He comments that the motel seldom has guests anymore since the new interstate bypassed the local highway, and Marion realizes that she probably took a wrong turn in the storm. Still nervous about being tracked by the police, Marion registers under a false name, and Norman checks her into Cabin 1 just next to the office. When she asks about food, Marion learns that Fairvale is only fifteen miles away.

Norman offers to share his supper with her so she doesn't have to go out again in the rain, and he goes back to the house. She begins unpacking, taking time to wrap the money inside a newspaper which she sets aside on the bed table. Then she overhears a shouted argument between Norman and his mother coming from the house. Mother Bates seems to have a low opinion of young women, and doesn't want Norman associating with them. Norman returns to the motel with sandwiches and milk and invites Marion to join him in the parlor just behind the check-in desk. Marion is taken aback by the stuffed birds that fill the parlor, a product of his taxidermy hobby. In their conversation over sandwiches, Norman talks about being trapped. Just as Marion presently feels trapped by her recent hasty decision, Norman is more permanently trapped in his co-existence with his mother and her madness. But as Norman observes, "we all go a little mad sometimes." Taking Norman's situation as a cautionary tale, Marion decides to return to Phoenix to make amends, and try to pull herself out of the trap she's gotten herself into before it's too late.

When Marion goes back to her room, Norman takes down a picture from the wall and looks through a peephole where he can watch Marion changing. With a new burst of intensity, Norman hurries up the hill and goes into the house. In her room, Marion sits in her robe and calculates some figures, working out how she can repay the $700 she has already spent. Then she tears up the paper containing the figures and flushes the pieces down the toilet. With newfound peace of mind, she slips out of her robe and slippers, and steps into the tub to enjoy a cleansing shower. Unseen behind her, the bathroom door opens. A figure approaches and pulls back the shower curtain. It is the shadowy figure of an old woman wielding a large kitchen knife. Marion screams. The blade lifts high into the air, and then strikes, and strikes again and again. Marion cannot escape the slicing blows of the knife. The savage attack continues, and then her killer leaves. Marion sinks down, reaching for the shower curtain which rips under her weight, and she falls over the edge of the tub.

The shower continues to run over her as her blood flows down the tub drain, her lifeless eyes fixed in a final hopeless stare. From the house, Norman's voice yells out in shock, "Mother! Oh, God! Mother! Blood! Blood!" He comes running down the hill and into Marion's cabin to find the aftermath of Mother's knife attack. He quickly cleans up the murder scene. He wraps Marion's body in the shower curtain and places her in the trunk of her car, and gathers her belongings into the trunk as well. At the last moment he spots the newspaper on the bed table and tosses it into the trunk, not knowing that it contains the stolen money. He drives to a swamp near the motel, where he pushes the car in and watches it slowly disappear into the dark bog. One week later, Sam Loomis is sitting in the back office of his hardware store in Fairvale, writing a note to Marion. He has changed his mind, and if it's not too late he wants to marry her right away even if his finances are limited right now. Marion's sister, Lila Crane ( Vera Miles ), comes into the store and asks if Marion is there. Sam tells her she isn't.

A private investigator named Arbogast ( Martin Balsam ) also enters the store and asks for Marion's whereabouts. His interest is in recovering the stolen $40,000, which Lila knew about, but Sam did not. Arbogast is convinced that Marion is somewhere in this town close to her boyfriend, so he sets out on a search of hotels and boarding houses around Fairvale to track her down. When Arbogast gets to the Bates Motel, Norman tells him he hasn't seen Marion, and that there haven't been any guests in weeks. But Arbogast manages to look at the register and sees the false signature in Marion's handwriting. Caught in his lie that here hadn't been any recent guests, Norman admits to remembering her now, and says she stayed that Saturday night and left early on Sunday morning. Arbogast spots Mother's silhouette sitting at the window of the house and asks to see her, but Norman refuses, saying that his mother is an invalid and shouldn't be disturbed. When Norman lets slip his Mother's impressions of Marion, Arbogast becomes determined to talk to her, but Norman insists that he leave.

Arbogast phones Sam and Lila to tell them that Marion had registered the previous Saturday night at the Bates Motel in Cabin 1, and that he means to sneak back and talk to Mrs. Bates regardless of Norman's objections. When he gets back to the motel, Arbogast looks into the office and the parlor briefly to see if Norman is there, and spots the motel safe which is standing open. Then he heads up to the house and goes inside. Sensing that no one is downstairs, he starts up the stairs. As he nears the top of the landing, Mother Bates emerges from the bedroom and stabs him. He stumbles backwards down the stairs and falls to the floor, where he is set upon and stabbed yet again. At the hardware store, Lila and Sam have been waiting for Arbogast, who was supposed to return hours ago. Sam tells Lila to stay behind while he goes out to the motel. When he gets there, he calls out but no one answers. Norman, standing by the swamp after having just disposed of the investigator's remains, hears Sam call out for Arbogast. Sam returns to the store, having seen no one at the motel or the house.

No Arbogast, no Bates, "only a sick old lady unable or unwilling to answer the door." Sam suggests they go see Sheriff Chambers ( John McIntire ) to report the missing Arbogast. At the sheriff's house, Chambers and his wife ( Lurene Tuttle ) listen to Sam and Lila tell their story. At their urging, Chambers phones the motel and talks to Norman, who says that the detective had been there but had left. When Lila presses Chambers about the mother, Chambers tells them that Norman's mother has been dead and buried for the past ten years, having poisoned her lover and herself in the only murder-suicide in Fairvale's living memory. But Sam and Lila insist that there is an old woman out there, and that Arbogast had told them that Norman wouldn't let Arbogast see his mother because she was too ill. That makes the sheriff wonder, if Norman's mother is up there at the motel, then who is buried in that grave in Green Lawn Cemetery? Norman is worried about all the people who have been snooping around. His concerns lead to another unseen argument with Mother in which he tells her she should hide in the fruit cellar for a few days. She refuses.

Norman says he will pick her up and carry her downstairs. She berates him, but in spite of Mother's protests to be put down, Norman carries his mother down the stairs. The next morning, Sunday morning, Lila and Sam meet Sheriff and Mrs. Chambers coming out of church. The sheriff has already been to the motel before church services. He didn't see anything strange and suggests that the detective probably just moved on to pursue a lead without telling them. He offers to help Lila report a missing person and a theft, and let the law find her sister. Unsatisfied, Lila and Sam decide to go out to the motel for themselves. Their plan is to register as husband and wife and check into a cabin. Then they will search the place more thoroughly. Norman assigns them to Cabin 10, and Sam insists on signing the register. As he pays and asks Norman for a receipt, Lila takes the key and goes ahead toward their cabin. On the way she checks that the door to Cabin 1 is unlocked. After a brief stop in cabin 10 to talk matters over, and after they are sure Norman is not nearby, Sam and Lila enter Cabin 1 to search for clues.

Sam notices that the shower curtain is missing and Lila finds a scrap of paper with something subtracted from $40,000, suggesting that Norman possibly knew about the money. Lila wants to talk to the woman in the house because she might have told Arbogast something. She wants Sam to distract Norman while she goes to the house. Sam tries to dissuade her, but she insists she can handle a sick old woman. Sam finds Norman in the office and engages him in conversation, while Lila circles around behind the motel to the house. She enters and looks through all the rooms upstairs. She goes into Mother's bedroom, filled with furnishings and clothes from the Victorian era but strangely preserved as if new. The outline of a woman's body is deeply impressed into the old mattress. She looks into Norman's bedroom, another room frozen in time containing the toys and small bed of a child. Meanwhile, Sam has been trying to get Norman to talk about money, looking for some indication that Norman has the stolen cash. Norman begins to grow agitated. When Sam mentions Norman's mother, Norman realizes that his other guest may be snooping around at the house. Sam tries to keep Norman from leaving, and they struggle.

Norman knocks Sam over the head, and Sam falls dazed to the floor. Lila is just coming down the stairs when she sees Norman running toward the front door. She ducks around behind the stairs and partway down the cellar steps to avoid him. Norman heads upstairs. Lila starts to come back up, when she notices the cellar door at the bottom of the steps. This is a room she hasn't examined yet, and she risks the opportunity to look into it. Walking through a storage room and into the barren fruit cellar beyond it, she sees an old woman sitting in a chair facing the far wall. She whispers, "Mrs. Bates." But the woman doesn't respond. She taps the woman on the shoulder. The chair swivels around to reveal the desiccated remains of an old woman's corpse, her face contorted into a near-skeletal grin and seemingly staring out of eyeless sockets. Lila screams and turns away, and her flinching reaction sets the bare hanging light bulb to swinging. At that moment, the living semblance of an old woman enters at the door wielding a large knife, blocking the only escape route from the cellar.

In the next moment, Sam's timely arrival saves Lila, as he subdues the would-be assailant from behind. The "woman's" wig falls away to reveal Norman Bates dressed in the guise of his mother. Lila, Sam, and Sheriff Chambers are among a bewildered group of interested persons who sit in an office in the County Court House, waiting to hear from a psychiatrist who has been called in to examine Norman. The psychiatrist ( Simon Oakland ) enters to tell them he has gotten the whole story, but not from "Norman." He got it from Norman's "Mother." As a personality, "Norman" no longer exists. The other half, the "Mother" half of Norman's mind has taken over. The psychiatrist goes on to explain that after the death of Norman's father, Norman came to depend on the undivided attention of his mother. But when she took a lover, Norman felt as if he had been replaced. His jealousy could not stand to share her. So he poisoned both his mother and her lover. Consumed with guilt over his crime, he stole his mother's corpse and treated it to preserve it as best he could.

To further the illusion that his mother was still alive, he began to divide his mind with his mother-- to think and speak for her. He walked around wearing her clothes and a woman's wig. At times he could be both personalities and carry on both sides of conversations. Other times, the "Mother" half, the dominant half, took over completely. "He was never all 'Norman,' but he was often only 'Mother.'" Norman's "Mother" personality was pathologically jealous of Norman. When Norman met Marion, he felt a strong attraction to her. That attraction set off the jealous "Mother," and it was "Mother" who killed Marion-- and most likely, other women before her. In a locked and guarded room, the physical shell of Norman Bates sits unmoving as "Mother"'s voice dominates his mind. She wants to prove to the world how harmless she is by sitting completely still. A fly crawls on Norman's hand and he doesn't swat at it, simply smirks as the voice of Mother's personality gloats that everyone must see that she wouldn't even harm a fly. In a final image, a tow chain begins pulling Marion's car out of the bog.

END OF FILM Psycho (1960) Psycho (1960) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) Background Alfred Hitchcock's powerful, complex psychological thriller, Psycho (1960) is the "mother" of all modern horror suspense films - it single-handedly ushered in an era of inferior screen 'slashers' with blood-letting and graphic, shocking killings (e.g., Homicidal (1961), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978) , Motel Hell (1980), and DePalma's Dressed to Kill (1980) - with another transvestite killer and shower scene). While this was Hitchcock's first real horror film, he was mistakenly labeled as a horror film director ever since. The nightmarish, disturbing film's themes of corruptibility, confused identities, voyeurism, human vulnerabilities and victimization, the deadly effects of money, Oedipal murder, and dark past histories are realistically revealed. Its themes were revealed through repeated uses of motifs, such as birds, eyes, hands, and mirrors.

The low-budget ($800,000), brilliantly-edited, stark black and white film came after Hitchcock's earlier glossy Technicolor hits Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959) , and would have been more suited for as an extended episode for his own b/w TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In fact, the film crew was from the TV show, including cinematographer John L. Russell. The master of suspense skillfully manipulates and guides the audience into identifying with the main character, luckless victim Marion (a Phoenix real-estate secretary), and then with that character's murderer - a crazy and timid taxidermist named Norman (a brilliant typecasting performance by Anthony Perkins). Hitchcock's techniques voyeuristically implicate the audience with the universal, dark evil forces and secrets present in the film.

Psycho also broke all film conventions by displaying its leading female protagonist having a lunchtime affair in her sexy white undergarments in the first scene; also by photographing a toilet bowl - and flush - in a bathroom (a first in an American film), and killing off its major 'star' Janet Leigh a third of the way into the film (in a shocking, brilliantly-edited shower murder scene accompanied by screeching violins). The 90-odd shot shower scene was meticulously storyboarded by Saul Bass, but directed by Hitchcock himself. [A satirical parody of scenes from various Hitchcock films, including some from Psycho, were included in Mel Brooks' comedy High Anxiety (1978). The shower scene itself has been referenced, spoofed and parodied in numerous films, including Brian De Palma's The Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and Dressed to Kill (1980), Squirm (1976), Victor Zimmerman's low-budget Fade to Black (1980), Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse (1981), John De Bello's Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!

(1990), Martin Walz' The Killer Condom (1997, Ger.), Wes Craven's Scream 2 (1997), Scott Spiegel's From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999), and the animated Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), in which Bugs acts out with the film's black-and-white footage and a can of Hershey's chocolate syrup poured down the drain.] In this film, Hitchcock's gimmicky device, termed a MacGuffin (the thing or device that motivates the characters, or propels the plot and action), is the stolen $40,000 from the realtor's office. Marion Crane becomes a secondary MacGuffin after her murder. The film's screenplay by Joseph Stefano was adapted from a novel of the same name by author Robert Bloch.

Remarkably, Bloch's 1959 novel was based on legendary real-life, Plainfield, Wisconsin psychotic serial killer Edward Gein, whose murderous character also inspired the mother-obsessed farmer in Deranged (1974), the Leatherface character in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and serial killer Jame Gumb ("Buffalo Bill") in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) .

[Bloch became a major horror screenwriter during the 60s decade and beyond, responsible for such suspenseful horror films and chillers as The Cabinet of Caligari (1962) - an update of the 1919 classic, Strait Jacket (1964), The Night Walker (1964), The Skull (1965), The Psychopath (1966), The Deadly Bees (1967), The Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Asylum (1972), the short feature Mannikin (1977), and The Amazing Captain Nemo (1977).] Like many of Hitchcock's films, Psycho is so very layered and complex that multiple viewings are necessary to capture all of its subtlety. Symbolic imagery involving stuffed birds and reflecting mirrors are ever-present. Although it's one of the most frightening films ever made, it has all the elements of very dark, black comedy. This film wasn't clearly understood by its critics when released.

Hitchcock admitted that Henri-Georges Clouzot's influential thriller Les Diaboliques (1955, Fr.) inspired his film. This taut masterpiece was followed by three feature film sequels (none directed by Hitchcock) and other imitations or TV films: Title TV pilot film, with Bud Cort as Bates Motel manager Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990) Mick Garris Made for Cable-TV film, with Anthony Perkins as Norman, Henry Thomas as a young Norman, and Olivia Hussey as Norma Bates Psycho (1998) Gus Van Sant An almost 'scene-by-scene' (actually 'shot-by-shot') remake (or replication) of the original classic, that only generated interest for the original film The film's four Academy Award nominations failed to win Oscars: Best Supporting Actress (Janet Leigh with her sole career nomination), Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock with the last of his five losing nominations), Best B/W Cinematography, and Best B/W Art Direction/Set Decoration. Bernard Herrmann's famous and memorable score with shrieking, harpie-like piercing violins was un-nominated.

When the film was originally aired in theaters in mid-1960, Hitchcock insisted in a publicity gimmick (a la P.T. Barnum) that no one would be seated after the film had started - the decree was enforced by uniformed Pinkerton guards. Audiences assumed that something horrible would happen in the first few minutes. Violence is present for about two minutes total in only two shocking, grisly murder scenes, the first about a third of the way through, and the second when a Phoenix detective named Arbogast is stabbed at the top of a flight of stairs and topples backwards down the staircase. The remainder of the horror and suspense is created in the mind of the audience, although the tale does include such taboo topics as transvestism, implied incest, and hints of necrophilia. The Story The bleak, monochrome film is made more effective by Bernard Herrmann's sparse, but driving, recognizable score, first played under the frantic credits (by industry pioneer Saul Bass) - shown with abstract, gray horizontal and vertical lines that streak back and forth, violently splitting apart the screens and causing them to disappear. The frenetic lines appear as prison bars or vertical city buildings.

[These criss-crossing patterns, like mirror-images, are correlated to the split, schizophrenic personality of a major protagonist.] The film opens with the aerial-view camera sweeping left to right along the urban skyline of "PHOENIX, ARIZONA" where some new construction is in progress. [The numerous references to birds in the film begins here, with the city of 'Phoenix'.] The specific date and time are emphasized in titles in the middle of the screen: FRIDAY, DECEMBER THE ELEVENTH TWO FORTY-THREE P.M The shot pans across many skyscraper buildings, and after a series of numerous dissolves, randomly chooses to descend and penetrate deeper into one of many windows in a cheaper, high-rise hotel building - the window's venetian blinds narrowly conceal the dingy interior. There, the camera pauses at the half-open window - and then voyeuristically intrudes into the foreground darkness of the drab room. The camera takes a moment to adjust to the black interior - and then pans to the right where a post-coital, semi-nude couple have just completed a seedy, lunch-time tryst.

Attractive, single 30-ish secretary, Marion (spelled not with an A but an O - signifying emptiness) Crane (Janet Leigh), wearing only a prominent white bra and slip and reclining back on a double bed, is with her shirtless lover/fiancee Sam Loomis (John Gavin) who stands over her. In the background is a bathroom (the first of three bedrooms with bathrooms in the background). Sam speaks the first line of dialogue, referring to the uneaten lunch food on the stand - on many levels, she has lost her appetite for their ungratifying relationship and mutual poverty. As he kisses her and they embrace on the bed, they discuss their "cheap" relationship and impoverishment, and their many unresolved issues: Sam: You never did eat your lunch, did you? Marion: I'd better get back to the office. These extended lunch hours give my boss excess acid. Sam: Why don't you call your boss and tell him you're taking the rest of the afternoon off? (It's) Friday anyway - and hot. Marion: What do I do with my free afternoon? Walk you to the airport? Sam: Well, you could laze around here a while longer.

Marion (foreshadowing a future hotel visit): Hmm. Checking out time is 3 pm. Hotels of this sort aren't interested in you when you come in, but when your time is up. Oh Sam, I hate having to be with you in a place like this. Sam: I've heard of married couples who deliberately spend an occasional night in a cheap hotel. Marion: When you're married, you can do a lot of things deliberately. Sam: You sure talk like a girl who's been married. Marion: Sam, this is the last time. Sam: For what? Marion: For this, meeting you in secret so we can be secretive. You come down here on business trips. We steal lunch hours. I wish you wouldn't even come. Sam: All right, what do we do instead? Write each other lurid love letters? It's a hot, Friday afternoon [although December, it undoubtedly looks like a summer day] and they are obviously in the midst of a "secretive" affair in Room No. 514. She loves Sam but they can only furtively see each other during his business trips.

Sam has flown in from a small town in California to see Marion - and "steal lunch hours." As she rises to dress and cover up her ample breasts, they discuss further difficulties in their fitful relationship (characterized as more sexual than intimate). Sam secretly enjoys the illicitness of their sleazy, "lurid" affair and suggests seeing her the next week - and even assents to having "lunch - in public." In a semi-ultimatum to Sam, Marion tells him that "this is the last time" - she will deny him further sexual couplings in "secretive" meetings. She expresses her frustration about their private love trysts and her real desire for marriage - she wants chastity, respectability, and public meetings in the place she shares with her sister (where a framed picture of her dead "Mother" morally disapproves, presides, and judges them). [Of course, there's another morally-disapproving, judgmental 'dead Mother' in the film, but that comes later.

One unanswered question in the film: Did Marion spend years nursing her invalid mother - selfless dedication that contributed to her fate as an old maid?] He agrees to see her under the new terms of 'respectability,' although he reminds her how "a lot of sweating out," "patience," and "hard work" would be prerequisites in a respectable relationship [Marion's sister later tellingly asserts: "Patience doesn't run in my family"]: Marion: Oh, we can see each other. We can even have dinner, but respectably. In my house, with my mother's picture on the mantel, and my sister helping me broil a big steak for three. Sam: And after the steak, do we send sister to the movies, turn Momma's picture to the wall? Marion: Sam! Sam: (begrudgingly) All right. Marion, whenever it's possible I want to see you and under any circumstances, even respectability. Marion: You make respectability sound disrespectful. Sam: Oh no, I'm all for it. But it requires patience, temperance, with a lot of sweating out. Otherwise though, it's just hard work.

But if I could see you and touch you, you know, simply as this, I won't mind. (He nibbles at her neck.) Sam, a small-town (Fairvale, California) hardware store proprietor, is also frustrated and self-pitying because of his money worries - he is a financial martyr, burdened by his father's debts and the alimony he must pay to his ex-wife. She proposes marriage directly (she is still a spinster and stuck in the same job after ten years) - and poignantly describes her willingness to share a life of cash-strapped hardship with him. But annoyingly, he balks at the thought, refusing because he doesn't want her to live in poverty and because he believes he must first pay off his debts over the next couple years. She threatens to leave him and thinks she may find "somebody available" to take his place and end her fears of being a fallen woman: Sam: I'm tired of sweating for people who aren't there. I sweat to pay off my father's debts and he's in his grave.

(Sam has walked in front of a fan with spinning blades.) I sweat to pay my ex-wife's alimony and she's living on the other side of the world somewhere. Marion: I pay too. They also pay who meet in hotel rooms. [This line evokes the famous last line of Milton's sonnet, On His Blindness: "They also serve who only stand and wait."] Sam: A couple years and my debts will be paid off. If she remarries, the alimony stops. Marion: I haven't even been married once yet. Sam: Yeah, but when you do, you'll swing. Marion: Oh Sam, let's get married! (They kiss and embrace.) Sam: Yeah. And live with me in a storeroom behind a hardware store in Fairvale? We'll have lots of laughs. I'll tell you what. When I send my ex-wife her alimony, you can lick the stamps. Marion: I'll lick the stamps. Sam: Marion, you want to cut this off, go out and find yourself somebody available? Marion: I'm thinking of it. Sam: How could you even think a thing like that?

Unhappy and unfulfilled in her unsanctified relationship, Marion rejects his idea to take the afternoon off and rushes back to her storefront real estate office - she is anxious about being late. [Director Hitchcock, wearing a ten-gallon hat, makes his cameo appearance on the Phoenix sidewalk facing away from the window of the realty office.] She is relieved that her boss Mr. George Lowery (Vaughn Taylor) is not back from lunch, but she suffers from a headache (brought on by her perennial problems with Sam). [Behind her in the office is a framed picture of a barren, desert scene]: Headaches are like resolutions. You forget them as soon as they stop hurting. She listens to her recently-married co-worker Caroline (Patricia Hitchcock, Hitchcock's real-life daughter) chatter about her interfering, nagging mother, who had suggested that her doctor prescribe tranquilizers for her wedding day to protect her (from the anguish of losing her virginity and having sex?) - her mother's nosiness angered her proprietary groom/husband Teddy. [Scenes of frigid winter are displayed behind her.] Caroline offers Marion a tranquilizer rather than an aspirin for her headache.

My mother's doctor gave them to me the day of my wedding. Teddy was furious when he found out I'd taken tranquilizers. Mirrors are ever-present throughout the film - Marion checks out her appearance and applies lipstick using a small compact mirror from her purse. Mr. Lowery arrives shortly afterwards with an important, wealthy (and inebriated) millionaire - a cowboy-hatted customer named Mr. Tom Cassidy (Frank Albertson). He is an oil-lease man who is sweating from the heat and complaining about the weather: "Wow! It's as hot as fresh milk." The salty oilman suggests that Lowery should "air-condition...up" his employees, because he "can afford it today." Mr. Cassidy has just proudly bought a house on Harris Street for his "sweet little girl" - his 18 year old, soon-to-be-married daughter ("baby"): Tomorrow's the day my sweet little girl - (He leers over at Marion) - Oh, oh, not you - my daughter, a baby. And tomorrow she stands her sweet self up there and gets married away from me. I want you to take a look at my baby.

Eighteen years old, and she never had an unhappy day in any one of those years. Flirting with Marion, he sits on her desk, and sensing that Marion is unhappy and feeling deprived with his talk of marriage, gloats about his wealth and his easing of life's pains through buy-offs: You know what I do about unhappiness? I buy it off. Are, uh, are you unhappy? Marion answers that she isn't "inordinately" unhappy - although she is uncomfortably reminded of her unmarried status and other deprivations. Then, the vulgar client takes out the $40,000 in cold, hard cash for the house purchase for his "respectable" married daughter as a wedding present, and boastfully waves and flops it around in front of his audience. He domineeringly explains how virile the money makes him: Now, that's, that's not buying happiness. That's just buying off unhappiness. I never carry more than I can afford to lose.

He tosses the money on Marion's desk, but the money is not for her - but for Cassidy's daughter's wedding dowry (although she is challenged and tempted by the money earmarked for a bride's house - she feels more entitled to it than the pampered daughter). It is an awkward, discomfiting sight for Marion who has just left her impecunious lover/partner whom she is unable to marry for lack of money. Caroline is astonished by Cassidy's brash proposition: "I declare!" Cassidy even brags about how he doesn't rightfully 'declare' his illicitly-obtained money to the government - an obvious illegality: "I don't. That's how I get to keep it." Lowery is worried about so much cash out in the open: "A cash transaction of this size is most irregular," but Cassidy assures him: "Aw, so what. It's my private money.

Now it's yours." [His transference of the 'dirty' private funds to Lowery suggests that Marion's boss may keep the cash transaction undeclared.] The loud-mouthed Cassidy embarrasses the real estate boss by exposing the presence of something else hidden away and unrevealed - a bottle in the desk in his office. He persuades Lowery to take him into the inner air-conditioned office for a drink. Lowery instructs Marion to put the large amount of cash in a bank's safe deposit box over the weekend: "I don't even want it in the office over the weekend. Put it in the safe deposit box in the bank." Caroline is jealous that Cassidy flirted with her colleague [Her 'respectable' marriage must be somewhat desperate and unfulfilling.]: He was flirting with you. I guess he must have noticed my wedding ring. Both women touch and handle the naughty, filthy money, and then Marion puts it into an envelope, wraps it up and sticks it in her purse. She is granted permission to go straight home after the bank deposit because of her headache.

Although she expects to be "in bed" all weekend, Cassidy thinks she needs an escape and propositions her with an invitation: What you need is a weekend in Las Vegas, the playground of the world! As she leaves, Marion refuses tranquilizers a second time from her co-worker: "You can't buy off unhappiness with pills." [But obviously, can't her unhappiness be bought off with money?] As she leaves the office, her shadow follows after her. In the next scene, Marion's shadow precedes her. In a moment of weakness and impulse, she has been tempted to bring the money home to her small bedroom instead of to the bank. (Her sister is away for the weekend in Tucson to "do some buying.") Again in partial undress wearing only a black bra and slip [after the theft, her underclothes turn black - signifying her darkness], Marion repeatedly and apprehensively eyes the money in a fat envelope lying on the bed (where she told Lowery and Cassidy she would spend the weekend). The camera zooms in and cuts back and forth to the envelope more than once. Next to it is her packed suitcase, ready for a trip.

[Behind her in this second bedroom in the film is another bathroom - this one with the shower head particularly noticeable. Also, more mirrors and windows and pictures looking down from the wall - two of her as a baby, another of her deceased parents. She has redirected the money intended by Cassidy for his "baby" to her own maternal instincts - her wish to be married to Sam, have respectable sex and raise a family.] She stares long and hard at herself in the dresser mirror. Although she appears casually indifferent and secure in the presence of the money, she nervously finishes packing and closes her full suitcase. She sits down on the bed, stares with desire at the money, and tries to stop herself from doing something she knows is shameful and wrong - something that is not "respectable." But she can't control her sinful, obsessive-compulsive behavior. Because her suitcase is already full and shut, she stuffs the envelope in her purse (with other important papers) and then leaves. While driving out of Phoenix toward Fairvale, California in her black car, Marion stares straight ahead and trance-like while imagining that she is on her way to elope with Sam with the large sum of cash with which to finance her elopement and marriage.

She hears a conversation with a startled Sam who is surprised to see her in Fairvale - with pilfered money for their salvation. His startled, echoing voice speaks in her head. With an uneasy reaction to her appearance, he would undoubtedly reject her solution to their problem: Marion, what in the world, what are you doing up here? Of course I'm glad to see you. I always am. What is it, Marion? Their conversation is cut short and interrupted. Significantly, she cannot finish talking with him. While waiting at a stoplight, her boss (and Cassidy) pass by in the cross-walk in front of her. He at first smiles and nods when recognizing her, and leaves the frame of the windshield. Likewise, she smiles - nervously. But then he stops, turns and furrows his brow at her. Mr. Lowery is puzzled and concerned to see her in her car when she was supposed to be home sick. Likewise, her face turns frozen after realizing that she has been caught. Bernard Herrmann's jarring music begins to play, slashing at her. She pulls away, gulps hard, and looks back - her conscience already gnawing away.

Unnerved but still drifting along irrationally, Marion drives her dark-toned car toward Fairvale from Phoenix and it turns to dusk and nighttime. She repeatedly looks into her rear-view mirror - symbolically checking out her own inner thoughts. She blinks her tired eyes and tries to avoid the glare of headlights of oncoming cars - spotlighting her crime. Norman Bates: A Most Terrifying Mama's Boy : NPR Haunted figure: Though he was a subtle, gifted actor, Perkins never managed to escape the character of Norman Bates, reprising the role in three sequels. The last was released when he was 58. Douglas Kirkland/Corbis hide caption toggle caption Douglas Kirkland/Corbis Haunted figure: Though he was a subtle, gifted actor, Perkins never managed to escape the character of Norman Bates, reprising the role in three sequels. The last was released when he was 58. Douglas Kirkland/Corbis Before Freddy Krueger, before Halloween, before Silence of the Lambs, there was Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic, Psycho. He was the boy next door, a motel manager slash transvestite slash serial killer — with emphasis on the slash.

Oh, and yes, he mummified his mother. Just a third of the way into the movie, Hitchcock has Norman — dressed as his mother — pull back the shower curtain and cut poor Marion Crane to bits in room No. 1 at the Bates Motel. Chocolate syrup proved to be the right stand-in for blood — it's a black-and-white movie, remember? But the moment is remembered as much for the slashing strings of composer Bernard Hermann as for its gore — surprising, when you think that originally Hitchcock didn't even want any musical accompaniment to the shower scene. And the sound of the stabbing? That was a knife being plunged into a casaba melon. Sound-effects artists tried cantaloupe and watermelon, but only the casaba could satisfy the director. Before the action was over, Hitchcock had ruined showering for a generation. Psycho was made fast and cheap — Hitchcock used his TV crew — and it scared the pants off audiences in 1960. The inspiration for Norman Bates goes back a few years earlier, according to Stephen Rebello, the author of Alfred Hitchcock and The Making of Psycho.

Article continues after sponsorship From A True Story, A Memorable Hollywood Thriller Rebello says that in November 1957, authorities in rural Plainfield, Wis., were looking for a woman, a hardware-store owner, who had gone missing. Following a clue, they entered the darkened, ramshackle farmhouse of a seemingly harmless 51-year-old handyman named Ed Gein. "They found this particular woman," says Rebello, "She had been unfortunately tortured and dressed out like a steer. ... And the house was kind of a charnel house of decomposing body parts, skull heads line up on shelves." Living just 40 miles away was a well-respected suspense writer named Robert Bloch, who read about Gein in the newspapers and became fascinated. He decided to fictionalize Gein's story, and his novel, Psycho, was published two years later. It tells the tale of a schizophrenic man who — years after his father dies — has murdered his demanding and controlling mother and her lover. And he continues to murder — not as himself, but in character, as his mother. Hitchcock read a review of the book and was hooked.

After he acquired the rights to Psycho, he eventually turned to a young screenwriter named Joseph Stefano. It didn't hurt that Stefano was in Freudian analysis at the time. But there was a problem: The screenwriter didn't like how the novelist had portrayed Norman in his book: a middle-aged, pudgy mama's boy, obsessed with Nazis. But Hitchcock had that covered. "Hitchcock floored [Stefano]," Rebello says. "He said, 'Don't worry about that, dear boy. How would you feel if Norman were played by Anthony Perkins?' Well, that was a whole another world. "Perkins was in his late '20s, good-looking, elfin, strange," Rebello continues. "He was being groomed as the next James Dean. And that excited Stefano immediately. He sort of looked at Hitchcock and said, 'Now we're talking.' " A Singularly Appealing Killer Making the killer appealing was the key to the film, says Rebello — not least because star Janet Leigh is eliminated so early on.

Tony Perkins was a bit of a teen heartthrob at the time, but he also had experience playing intense characters, including baseball player Jimmy Piersall, who has a mental breakdown in the film Fear Strikes Out. That nervous energy surfaces not far into Psycho, when Norman prepares an awkward dinner at the motel for the soon-to-be dispatched Marion Crane. He hems and haws, stutters and stammers as he tries to make conversation with the attractive Marion. Turns out that several of these idiosyncrasies were Perkins' idea — including having the killer pop pieces of candy corn into his mouth when he gets nervous. According to biographer Ronald Bergan, author of Anthony Perkins: A Haunted Life, in many ways the actor was born to play the part. "It's a weird coincidence that Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter, knew nothing about Tony Perkins' life, and yet he wrote that Norman Bates had lost his father at 5, had a very domineering mother," Bergan says. "And that's exactly what happened to Tony Perkins." There was at least one other confluence that made Perkins perfect for the part, according to Bergan.

Both men had hidden lives they wanted to keep secret: Norman's as a serial killer, Perkins' as a gay man in the 1950s. "And I think that fear of being discovered was a terrible fear for Tony Perkins. Not only did he think Norman Bates would destroy his career. But, obviously, if he was exposed as a gay man ... " Perkins never did shake Norman. By the time he died, in 1992, he had appeared in three unremarkable sequels to Psycho. But why can't we shake Norman Bates either? Dr. Justin Frank has a few notions. He's a psychiatrist who lectures on film. And he wouldn't mind getting Norman Bates on his couch — as long as it was in a well-guarded institution. Analyzing Norman: Mother Issues, With A Side Of Rage "I would probably work with his hatred of this mother and his rage at being abandoned," Frank says.

"And then I would work very intensively with how every single session, at the end of each session, he would probably feel like killing me — because he can't stand to have anybody turn their back on him." Near the end of Psycho, a psychiatrist explains what happened to Norman: that he had murdered his mother and her lover years earlier, after feeling abandoned by her. That, over the years, his personality had become shared with hers. That the mother half would kill those who threatened to come between mother and son — and that now Mother had taken over Norman's mind completely, and probably forever. Frank thinks the screenwriter and director portrayed Norman's paranoid schizophrenic condition accurately — and that, considering the state of psychiatry almost 50 years ago, the therapist in the film is correct in his analysis. With one exception, that is: Frank doesn't think Norman's condition has to be permanent. "He's an interesting guy who essentially substitutes the pain of loss and grieving with becoming the other person. So one way to manage loss is you totally take on the characteristics and the behavior of the person who is dead. "But I think that if you got him on an analytic couch, you would begin to see breakthroughs between those two partial people.

I don't think he is irretrievably lost, the way it was presented." Psycho's brilliant final scene shows Norman huddled alone, locked in a room at the county courthouse. His mind has been completely taken over by Mother, and he speaks to himself in her creepy voice, saying that she would never harm anyone, that she wouldn't even harm the fly that is buzzing on her hand. Norman/Mother then smiles, looks up at the camera — and for just the merest instant, the mummified skull of Mother is superimposed on Norman's face. Then that fades into a shot of Marion Crane's car being dredged from the swamp behind the Bates Motel. Critics have found Norman Bates' legacy in brainy, charming, psychotic killers like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Someone we'd maybe like to hang out with — except for the killing part. But it's just that killing part, says Justin Frank, that makes us love Norman Bates, at least up there on the movie screen. "People are excited by people who don't just yell, 'Kill the umpire!' but actually do kill the umpire.

And I think there's something about that that makes him enduring also." Norman Bates | Villains Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia A boy's best friend is his mother. „ ~ Norman Bates' famous quote Norman Bates (born August 1934) was an American serial killer and keeper of The Bates Motel in California. Bates suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder and psychotic behavior, believing himself to be his controlling Mother . At the same time he suffered from visual and auditory hallucinations, in which his mother apparently talked him into committing acts of violence in order to appease her. When the Mother personality took over, Bates would fly into murderous rages targeting women who aroused him, usually whilst dressed in her clothing. He is known to have eventually killed his mother and kept her mummified corpse in the basement of his house for many years. He is the primary antagonist of the 1959 suspense novel Psycho and the 1960 film of the same name, and appears as the anti-hero/protagonist villain of the three sequels. Norman's incestuous relationship with his mother is an exaggerated interpretation of the human Oedipus Complex.

He is portrayed by: Vince Vaughn (1998 Remake) Freddie Highmore (Bates Motel) A 2013 syndicated TV series, entitled Bates Motel, retcons much of Bates' backstory and explores his teenage years in a modern setting. Although technically a prequel, the show should be considered more of a re-imagining. The young Norman Bates is portrayed by Freddie Highmore. Contents Biography Early life Norman Bates was born in August 1934 just outside of Fairvale, California, to John Bates and Norma Spool. Norma was a manipulative and controlling woman who did not allow Norman to have a social life. She was deeply religious and paranoid, possibly suffering from a severe form of schizophrenia. Norma indoctrinated her son and taught him sexuality was a sin and that all women, besides herself, were whores. In 1940, when Norman was six years old, his father was stung to death by bees. Following his death, Norma began to practice sadistic control over her son, and on several occasions throughout his puberty sexually aroused him on purpose, only to punish and humiliate him afterwards.

As a result of Norma's overbearing control and obscene sexual smothering, Norman developed an extreme Oedipus Complex. Later in his adult life, Norman confessed to having had full sexual intercourse with Norma when he was a teenager, with one particular instance resulting in her becoming pregnant. Norma became repulsed by the idea that she was carrying the child, and conducted an abortion. In 1949, Norma became romantically involved with Chet Rudolph whom she would eventually marry. It would be Chet who would give her the idea of opening a motel. Around this time Norman had a heated argument with her whilst hanging some washing, during which she called him a mistake and expressed extreme hatred towards him. Her new husband was crude, egotistical, chauvinistic and repeatedly teased Norman over his relationship with Norma. Chet would repeatedly allude to his sex life with Norma in conversation. Over time Norman became extremely jealous of Chet, and on a summer night in 1949 Norman poisoned Norma and Chet's ice tea with arsenic, killing them both.

Chet did not go down easily, and ended up attacking Norman whilst in the throes of agonizing arsenic poisoning, eventually succumbing to the toxin and falling down the stairs to his death. After both Chet and Norma had died, he dragged Norma's corpse to the basement and embalmed it. As Norman matured into a young adult, he began to emulate Norma, believing himself on occasion to be her, even going so far as wearing her clothes and a wig. He would sometimes sit in her chair and speak in her voice, doing anything to convince himself that she was still alive. During this period, he took over ownership of the Bates Motel. Norman had several unsuccessful sexual encounters with women as a young man, with at least two known to have resulted in murder after they aroused him. One of his early victims, a teenager called Holly, sneaked into his house and accidentally wandered into his mother's bedroom, where she found Norma's mummified corpse lying on the bed. Recoiling in horror, she was soon stabbed to death by Norman, who was hiding in the closet dressed in women's clothing and a wig. Norman would later strangle and drown another teenage girl under similar circumstances.

The "Mother" personality in his head eventually would become so overbearing as to consume him completely, taking over his body and committing terrible acts of violence and murder. When the Mother persona subsided, normally after committing a murder, Norman would remember very little of the act of killing, and become highly distressed and remorseful, sometimes even baffled as to where evidence such as blood and torn clothing came from. Mother is cold, calculated and panther-like, however when Norman is caught off guard and still "himself," he is clumsy, stammering and very panicked. Adult Life & First Killing Spree [Psycho] In December 1960, realty clerk Marion Crane fled Phoenix, Arizona, having stolen forty thousand dollars worth of her employers money, and stopped off at the Bates Motel for a night. She had stolen the money to help pay off large debts accrued by her lover Sam Loomis, with whom she was having an affair. It was a stormy night, and Norman allowed Marion to stay in Cabin 1 at the motel.

Norman found he was attracted to young Marion, and after watching her shower through a small hole he had drilled in the cabin wall, donned Norma's clothing, stormed into the bathroom, and stabbed her to death in the bathtub with a large kitchen knife. Wrapping up her body in a shower curtain, he would later stuff it into the trunk of Marion's car, and push the vehicle into a nearby swamp. Shortly after Marion's murder, her absence is reported to the police by her sister Lila and a detective named Arbogast locates the Bates Motel and questions Norman about Marion. He lies to Arbogast and denies ever having met her nor giving her lodgings. Arbogast is not convinced by Norman's story, and later breaks into the Bates house in search of clues, where he is murdered by Norman, once again dressed as a woman. Lila, and indeed Marion's lover Sam Loomis, soon become concerned when Arbogast fails to report back to them, and head to Fairvale where they visit the local Sheriff, who had spoken to Arbogast just prior to his disappearance.

The Sheriff tells Lila and Sam that he was puzzled by Arbogast, who said he had intended to visit Norma Bates at some point during the investigation, despite the knowledge that she had been dead for some time. Sam and Lila rent a room from Norman, and find evidence in Cabin 1 confirming that Marion had been there. Sam decides to enter the Bates house, where he is subdued, but not killed, by Norman. Lila in the meantime sneaks into the basement, and finds Norma's desiccated corpse sat in a rocking chair. Dressed in women's clothing, Norman appears in the basement and attacks Lila, but is prevented from killing her by Sam who comes to the rescue. Norman is arrested and incarcerated in a mental institution, where he would remain for 22 years. A psychiatrist declares Norman insane, and apparently completely dominated by the Mother personality of his psyche. Police later discover Marion's car under water, and drag it from the swamp. Release From Prison & Second Killing Spree [Psycho II] After a lengthy court hearing, Norman was released from custody in 1983 after 22 years.

Despite protests from relatives of his victims, including Lila Crane, a judge rules Norman to be rehabilitated and orders his release. Accompanied by his psychiatrist Dr. Bill Raymond, Norman returns to his family home which he finds is just how he left it. The motel is still open, being run by the slobbish and obtuse Warren Toomey. Norman gets a job at a local diner run by the kindly Emma Spool, and gets to work in the kitchen preparing meals. He is met with distrust by many, but is generally accepted by Mrs Spool and the head chef. He becomes friendly with the waitress Mary Samuels, a girl in her late teens whom he allows to stay at the motel one night after an argument with her boyfriend. Upon arrival back at the motel with Mary, Norman discovers that Toomey has been allowing prostitutes and drug users on the premises, and dismisses him on the spot. He tells Mary to go up to the house while he deals with Toomey. Despite her reluctance, she goes anyway. Back at the house, Norman prepares a sandwich for Mary, but becomes unnerved when he finds a kitchen knife in a drawer. Sensing Norman's unease, Mary becomes uncomfortable and decides to leave.

Norman reveals to Mary that he is lonely and would appreciate her company if she stays, and makes light of the fact that he killed his mother by poisoning her all those years ago. Mary laughs along nervously, and eventually stays the night in the spare room. The next morning, a drunken Toomey picks a fight with Norman whilst he is working in the kitchen, and later follows him back to the motel, where a dark figure slashes his face and then kills him. Meanwhile, Norman starts getting bizarre phone calls from a woman claiming to be his mother, and ends up seeing the specter of her looking out of the bedroom window one day. He runs up to the bedroom, where he finds that it is furnished how it used to be two decades ago. Moments later, somebody locks him inside. A short while later, a teenage couple break into the basement to have sex, and are disturbed by a dark figure in women's clothing. The male is murdered, however the female manages to escape. After a suspicious note is found in the diner kitchen, allegedly from mother, Norman starts to believe that he is slipping back into insanity. Meanwhile Lila Crane arrives in Fairview and it is revealed that Mary is Lila's daughter.

She chastises Mary for her friendship with Norman, and in a private conversation between the two it is revealed that Lila had been toying with Norman, making the phone calls, dressing up as his mother and even went as far as furnishing Norma's bedroom in an attempt to drive Norman to the edge again. Mary is revealed to have been complicit in this, but shows regret at being involved, much to Lila's annoyance. Lila then becomes focused on the alleged death of the teenage boy at Norman's house, after hearing of the missing person report filed by his terrified girlfriend. Sheriff Hunt refuses to investigate apparent connection to Norman due to the lack of evidence, adding to Lila's dismay. Despite Lila's apparent complicity, the strange goings on continue at the Bates house, with the line between reality and insanity becoming increasingly blurred when Lila is herself murdered by a dark figure whilst in the process of donning her Norma outfit. Mary is present when the police discover Toomey's body stuffed into the trunk of his car, and runs to warn Norman that the police are on the way to arrest him as a suspect.

She finds Norman having a psychotic episode at the house; he is on the phone talking to his psychiatrist, yet believes he is talking to Norma. Fearful that he may be spiralling back into madness, Mary dons Norma's clothes and pretends to be her in an attempt to have him snap out of it. Whilst talking to Norman on another house phone, she is surprised by Dr. Raymond, and accidentally stabs and kills him. Norman meanwhile can no longer cope and fails to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Mary ultimately becomes the one and only suspect in the killings, when she is caught red-handed by the police whilst appearing to intend to stab Norman. She is shot dead, and the case is closed with her named as the murderer. Norman's involvement remained unsolved, as he was never able to differentiate between reality and his visual and auditory hallucinations. Learning the Truth Some time after Mary's death at the hands of the police, Norman's former boss Emma Spool paid him a visit and confessed to him that she was his real mother, with Norma having been actually his auntie who looked after him whilst she was institutionalized.

Norman was too young to remember the transition, and had always assumed Norma was his mother. Emma had been the true killer, having murdered Toomey, Arbogast and the young boy who entered the basement, trying to protect Norman from any harm. As Emma sat and explained everything to him, Norman murdered her with a shovel and took her body upstairs to embalm it, creating a new mother effigy for himself. Third Killing Spree & Second Incarceration [Psycho III] Approximately one month after killing Emma Spool, Norman encountered, and became infatuated with, defrocked nun Maureen Coyle, who had fled her convent after having accidentally killed a fellow nun whilst trying to take her own life. Around the same time, Norman employed aspiring musician Duane Duke as a desk clerk at the motel, without realizing that Duke and Coyle had met some days before on the highway, and Duke had tried to rape her. Norman gives Coyle an extended stay for no fee in Cabin 1, but becomes increasingly unnerved at her resemblance to Marion Crane, especially when he realizes they share the same initials.

After watching her shower through the spy hole in the wall, Norman assumes his Mother disguise and proceeds to kill her, however upon arriving in the bathroom finds that Maureen has run herself a bath and attempted suicide by cutting her wrists. As she fades into unconsciousness, she sees Norman's disguise, but does not stay awake long enough to realize it is him. Instead, she has a hallucination of her own, seeing Norman as the Virgin Mary. Norman snaps out of his persona and takes Maureen to the hospital for treatment. Meanwhile a pushy reporter, Tracy Venable, arrives in Fairvale to investigate the disappearance of Emma Spool, convinced, as Lila Crane was similarly convinced, that Norman had killed her and is still a threat to society. Sheriff Hunt tells her to back off and leave him alone, but she persists in her harassment of him, eventually telling Maureen about Norman's past causing her to leave the motel in fear. With Maureen gone, Norman murders two guests overnight, one of which had just had sex with hired hand Duane Duke. After disposing of their bodies, Norman returns to find Spool's corpse missing. He soon finds Duke with the body, who tries to extort money out of Norman for keeping quiet.

Norman and Duke enter into a violent fight, resulting in Duke subdued and thrown into Norman's car. Duke wakes up on the journey out of town, startling Norman causing him to lose control of the vehicle and plow into a swamp, where Duke eventually drowns. Maureen meanwhile has realized her affections for Norman and comes back to Fairvale, where she and Norman share a tender moment on the staircase. Mother unexpectedly calls out to Norman, startling him, which accidentally knocks Maureen down the stairs to her death. In retribution, Norman ravages Spool's corpse with a knife as Tracy, who had found her way in, stands by watching in horror. Tracy reveals a little more to Norman about his past, and of Spool's role in his life, contradicting some of what Spool told him before he killed her. Spool was in love with John Bates, even though he was married to Norma, and one day kidnapped Norman out of spite. Norman was eventually returned to his parents, and Spool was institutionalized for severe mental health issues. Spool, as it would transpire, was not his mother. Sheriff Hunt finds Norman dressed in his disguise, knife in hand, completely delirious.

He arrests him where he is taken for evaluation, and incarcerated once again. The Fran Ambrose Talk Show Incident [Psycho IV: The Beginning] Norman in Psycho IV: The Beginning. In 1990, radio talk show host Fran Ambrose hosted a night time special on matricide, inviting along various guests to the studio including a rehabilitated murderer and a psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Richmond, to discuss the topic. Members of the public were invited to call in and talk freely about matricide. One particular caller, a gentleman identifying himself only as "Ed" called in the early hours to talk about his violent past, and apparent sexual relationship with his abusive mother. Through an extensive conversation with Ed, Ambrose learned of a number of Ed's victims throughout the decades, and at various moments endured another persona as they spoke. Dr Richmond knew enough of Ed's stories to convince himself that this was actually Norman Bates, who had not long been released from custody for a second time. Richmond demanded that Bates' calls be traced and the police informed, but Ambrose refuses and encourages the show to go on. Norman, or Ed as they know him, was married to a lady called Connie, and they were expecting a child together.

He told Ambrose that Mother still bubbled close to the surface from time to time, and was telling him that the child would be just like him, a killer. He had considered killing Connie and the unborn child to stop the Bates bloodline, but had so far managed to control himself. Norman ultimately gives in to Mother and takes Connie to the old Bates house to kill her. Connie manages to talk Norman down, convincing him that their child will be normal. In one last act of defiance, Norman torches the Bates house and leaves it to burn, proclaiming "I'm free." Victims Norma Bates (49) - poisoned by arsenic in Ice Tea. Chet Rudolph (47) - poisoned by arsenic in Ice Tea . Holly (19) - stabbed to death with kitchen knife. Gloria (41) - strangled with rope and drowned in swamp. Marion Crane (27) - stabbed to death with kitchen knife in shower. Det. Milton Arbogast (51) - stabbed to death with kitchen knife. Emma Spool (65) - hit over the head with a shovel. Maureen Coyle (22) - head impaled.

Patsy Boyle (29) - stabbed to death with kitchen knife. Duane Duke (28) - hit over the head. Red (21) - stabbed to death with kitchen knife. The Bates Motel [2013-present] See: Norman Bates (Bates Motel) . Related Media Norman Bates as depicted in the 1992 comic book adaptation of Psycho. He shares more of a similarity to as he was described in the novel. Robert Bloch wrote a sequel novel, Psycho II, which acted as a parody of Hollywood slasher films. In it, Norman escapes from custody and starts a killing spree on a film production of the original Psycho killings. The real life film producers of the film version did not like the idea, and chose to go in their own direction with the sequels. Interestingly, the film Scream 3 would explore a similar concept decades later, with a spree of killings occurring on a film set intended to emulate the environment of the original film's murders. The Scream series itself was, in part, inspired by Psycho, with references made to the films in dialogue.

A 1987 TV pilot titled Bates Motel was produced following the release of Psycho III, which had Norman Bates [played by Kurt Paul] in a minor part alongside fellow psychopath Alex West. It was filmed in black and white in keeping with the style of the original film. The pilot was poorly received and any plans for syndication were abandoned. Of note, the story had Bates die whilst incarcerated, and the new protagonist West inherits the motel and house. A three-part comic adaptation of Psycho was released in 1992. Although a colorized adaptation of the Hitchcock film, Norman did not look like Anthony Perkins due to the actor refusing his likeness to be used. Instead Norman appears like he did in the novel: a middle-aged, overweight, balding man. Vince Vaughn portrays Norman in the 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. Trivia The creation of Norman Bates was inspired by real-life serial killer Ed Gein . Ed Gein was also the inspiration of Leatherface and Buffalo Bill . Norman Bates' incestuous relationship with his mother is an exaggerated interpretation of the human Oedipus Complex.

The psychiatrist Sigmund Freud coined the term to describe the theoretical psychosexual desires of a child, whom during his development desires his mother's love. Freud theorized that this could manifest in both male and female infants, with the female iteration being the Electra Complex. Another fictional serial killer with a possible Oedipus Complex is Jason Voorhees . Norman's pattern of killing those who arouse him is plausible in the psychological development of sociopaths. Real life murderers such as Andrei Chikatilo were known to enact extreme forms of violence in order to achieve full sexual gratification. The first story and its characters were created by novelist Robert Bloch in the novel Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock adapted it into the film we all know and love. The character of Norman Bates, and the Psycho mythos, has been said to have inspired dozens of other horror films, and is considered as the benchmark for slasher movies. The character name of Sam Loomis in Halloween was taken directly from Psycho, with the character of Billy Loomis in Scream being inspired by both characters of the same name, and even quotes Bates in the final act of the film.

When Norman kills Duane Duke in Psycho III, this is the only time that he is not seen acting up as "Mother." Anthony Perkins was diagnosed with HIV during the filming of Psycho IV. That aside, the director of the film described Perkins as one of the most difficult actors he has ever worked with. Norman Bates is unique to other horror film franchise villains in which he is given a happy ending at the end of his series and also manages to break away from his villainy and presumably lead a more ordinary life.

Question: Who plays the killer in the 1960 film Psycho where he dresses in his mother's clothes?
Answer: Anthony Perkins